Neïl Beloufa – Dominant (2018)

Neïl Beloufa (b. Paris, 1985, lives and works in Paris) is internationally renowned for his large installations featuring objects made of Plexiglas, steel wire, plywood and plastic, combined with video works – documentary and fiction. In Beloufa’s oeuvre there is no hierarchy between images; styles, forms and materials are combined without limits.
Nowadays visual material is constantly being produced and shared, with hardly any distinction made in quality or meaning. As a consequence of the emergence of the internet, Beloufa believes that culture is undergoing a reassessment. In his work, he focuses on the increasing penetration of society by digital technology, which has become a universal instrument for understanding the world. Humans are allowing themselves, more and more, to be studied, guided and controlled by algorithms and statistics. From Albert Heijn and our eating habits, Netflix and our viewing habits, to our personal tastes via likes on Facebook – we allow our lives to be translated into digital data.

Beloufa makes use of the vocabulary of the information era. He creates sculptures that resemble holograms or Apple screensavers – technology to please people. His installations blur the distinction between the virtual and the physical worlds. He criticises the utopia of our neoliberal society, at the same time showing in what a complex way the internet has changed interaction and meaning in life, with fabricated identities and fake news becoming the order of the day.

The production process is in contrast with the theme of his art. Beloufa works on his installations and film sets in a warehouse in Paris, not with professional welders and technicians, but with young artists. In this profit-oriented world, Studio Beloufa functions as a way for artists to develop their skills and earn a living.

For Hybrids, Beloufa staged a setting of figures – consisting solely of slim outlines in rebar. Their poses do not make it clear whether this is an orgy or a fight. In the surroundings of the park, the physical but extremely fragile and subtle sculpture created the impression of a drawing, an interplay of lines on a flat plane, occupying a space somewhere between the basic effects of a digital modelling program like SketchUp and the brilliant lines of a drawing by Picasso.